


The Cure for Anything

by leoandlancer



Series: Mermaid AU [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: First Kiss, Junkrat's pretty obnoxious, Lucio knows exactly where this is going, M/M, Mermaid Roadhog, Protective Roadhog, Roadhog doesn't really mind, Trans Male Lucio, Treasure Hunting, Treasure scavenget Junkrat, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 02:24:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9051493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoandlancer/pseuds/leoandlancer
Summary: As a professional and lifelong treasure seeker, Junkrat has found all kinds of things washed ashore after a storm. Stray flotsam of ships long dead and sunk. Spars and lost boats. Ambergris and glass buoys. A twelve foot long half-man, half bullshark though, that's never been seen before. That's unexpected.And all the more so when the mershark tells Junkrat he knows him.A Mermaid/Treasure Seeker AU as part of a Secret Santa exchange for Alec (mccreesasshole on tumblr!) with fluff and mermaids. I hope you enjoy, and Merry Christmas.





	1. Lucio

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mccreesasshole](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=mccreesasshole).



> Title is from a quote by Danish author Karen Blixen, "The cure for anything is saltwater - tears, sweat or the sea."  
> Thank you for the prompt Alec, I really hope you enjoy this.  
> Many loving thanks to Windlion, who cheered me on and helped write the summary with me at about a quarter past midnight, and to Daishar, who beta read and insisted I keep writing. <3

It was not quite dawn when Junkrat charged through the door of Lucio's tiny wharf house. It was actually a charge, not just a rapid advance, and it broke the door as he came through. Chunks of wood spun in with him.

Lucio, startled out of his fourth hour of sleep and a year's growth he couldn't spare, sat up with a jerk. He twisted around too fast, fell sideways out of his hammock, and landed in a heap. He groaned.

"Woah. Woah, ok, alright," dazed from the fall, unsure what time it was and firmly resolving to start locking the gate to his yard, Lucio began a mental inventory of any part of his brain that could function. His hammock, turning over and over above him, dumped a pillow on him on one turn, and his blanket and mp3 player on the next. “Calm down.”

Junkrat was panting as though he’d just run a mile, and hadn't spared a glance at his friend scraping himself off the floor. He was standing in the middle of the tiny house actually shaking.

"I am calm!" Junkrat snarled. He picked a mug off the table and hurled it with precision into the open mouth of Lucio's wood-stove. "Calm, damnit!"  The mug shattered.

"Sure," Lucio said, blinking sourly at the fragments of his favorite mug nestled in last night's embers. "What?"

Junkrat wouldn't settle, or sit, or make eye contact and finally Lucio gave up trying to understand him as he knocked pieces of ceramic out of the stove and pushed a few sticks of kindling into the half cooled embers for a new fire. With Junkrat in here and gibbering, there was going to be no opportunity to go back to sleep.

"Explain?" Lucio suggested when he'd gotten a fire going and plonked a full kettle onto the range. The faint light coming in through the windows was steel grey and dim, and outside, the world was still dark and the gulls were quiet. The noise of the waves below the floor was muted, the tide was pretty well all out.

"Beached," Junkrat finally managed. He had both his hands flat on the table, looking at Lucio with a wild eyed panic. "Down past Sugar Shell. In the tide pools."

It occurred to Lucio, as he dropped into one of two chairs he owned, that he'd never actually seen Junkrat panicked. Seen him wild, hysterical, seen him violent and angry and laughing until he couldn't stay upright. Seen him lounging on three hundred year old gold and rubies. Seen him float to the surface of the ocean, lifeless and cold and bleeding. Seen him lying like a dead thing on the deck of Lucio's boat while Angela worked with her sleeves rolled up and his blood on her face to revive him.

But he'd never seen Junkrat panic.

“Beached," Lucio repeated and shivered involuntarily. It was cold before the dawn, cold enough that the heat from the stove would make the tin roof condensate, and for a few hours raindrops would drip from the roof onto everything. Lucio absently pushed his guitar into it's shelf on the underside of the table for safe keeping and blinked hard. His body had been dumped out of it's hammock at great expense to listen to Junkrat. Now his brain had to do some work.

Junkrat just nodded.

"Whale? Dolphin?" Lucio looked beseechingly at the kettle. At least twenty minutes before the stove would be hot enough to boil water for coffee. He was running on less than four hours of sleep. His dreads were loose over his shoulders and he had no idea where he'd left his hair band. His friend and business partner was in a panic and had broken his damn door, again. Better mornings could easily be imagined.

"No," Junkrat was still struggling to get his words out, still breathless and shaking.

"Talk to the harbour master." Lucio said absently.

"Mermaid."

"Cool, cool," Lucio stretched his leg out and tipped the lid of his old wooden sea chest open with his toes. He stared in at the folded shirts, shorts, underwear, carefully fitted binders, socks and sweaters. He'd seen spare hair bands in here last week but they never seemed--

The lid of the trunk slammed closed as Lucio went from dozy tired to rocket-fired attention.

He sat bolt upright, faced Junkrat with undivided attention and stared steadily for the space of a full breath. "Say that one more time my dude?"

"Mermaid."

It was sheer goddamn luck that Lucio's feet found themselves stepping into his deck shoes as he tore out of his ruined doorway with Junkrat pelting after him.

The world outside was damp, windless, slate grey, and cold. It would take longer to run the arc of the long beach in the fog like Junkrat apparently had instead of cutting straight across the bay. Lucio made a hard left-hand turn as he shot out of his door and jumped off the edge of the wharf towards the water.

A single sulky looking seagull was perched on the cabin top of his boat  _ Hylinea _ , and took off with a startled shriek as Lucio landed hard beside it. Junkrat landed next to him in a flurry of limbs, and immediately got out of the way as Lucio called an apology to the seagull and swung down and into the pilot house.

"You said past Sugar Shell?" Lucio hit the ignition. The familiar snarl of the diesel engine coming to life under his feet was deeply reassuring. He let the engine idle as he switched on his chart plotter and darted to the stern to yank the stern line off it's cleat.

"Sugar Shell, yeah, tide pools," Junkrat was crouched in the bow, losing the bow line. He put his metal hand on the dark, wet wood of the wharf's piling and shoved. The bow tipped away from Lucio's brightly painted little shack, and Lucio ducked back into the cabin and pushed the boat into gear.

"Get back up on the cabin-top or in here, you make a better door than a window," Lucio called. Junkrat obligingly scrambled out of line of sight and Lucio snapped on the running lights and pushed the throttle forward. The engine's low, sleepy idle went to a steady purr and his little boat tilted away from it's home wharf, and out towards the faint green glow of the channel marker.

The bay was a maze of constantly shifting sandbars, and there were only a few channels that were consistently dragged to stay deep enough to keep boats from going aground. This being low tide, and a spectacularly low one at that with the moon at full, Lucio stared straight out at the green light and passed it safely to his right before looking for the next marker.

The water of the bay was so flat it looked like liquid silver in the dark fog of the pre dawn, and the wake of Lucio's boat cut a V of black and white waves that spread smoothly out behind him. He could see the dark ghosts of boats and shanties moored on his right, and the occasional dark mass on his left of a pier or wharf with the larger ships tied up.

"What the hell were you doing out at Sugar Shell in the middle of the night?" Lucio called up after they'd past the fifth channel marker and were aiming for the sixth. He'd already once heard the hush of sand kissing briefly against the underside of his hull as he managed to pass just over it. He shouldn't be out here with the tide so low.

"Neap tide was so low and there's been some heavy storm surges bringing all sorts of loot to shore. Thought something might have washed up." Junkrat stuck his head down from the cabin top, upside down in the pilot house's window, he still looked pale under his sunburn and more than a little shaken.

"Find anything that looked good?" Lucio asked, more to keep Junkrat talking then out of actual interest. Junkrat always found something that looked good. He had a knack for finding treasure. As far as Lucio could tell, Junkrat's ability to find and successfully salvage treasure off and from below the ocean floor was so pronounced it could well be supernatural. Lucio privately suspected he could taste gold in the water when he dove. Even this last year on land had been startlingly profitable for him and that was just from beachcombing. 

"Dunno. Saw the mermaid and booked it," Junkrat replied flatly.

They were quiet as Lucio cleared the last of the channel markers and got some deeper water under their keel. He breath out a sigh of relief and revved up blindly into the fog towards open water. The fog was thicker here, and it wasn't dull grey but turning rosy gold as they went. The flat water around them went tawny yellow and silver. They broke out of the fog so abruptly it gave Lucio the same skipped heartbeat a fall would. Cliff jumping at the beach was like this. Green grass and yellow sand and laurel trees on either side and then hurling outward over a cliff, huge sky above you, sea stretching for miles. 

Behind them, the fogbank was a flat, golden wall, and before them dawn had broken towards the east, the sun not quite above the horizon. The sky looked clean and fresh, pink and orange at the unbroken horizon and turning to pale green then power blue. The few scattered clouds, remnants of a bad storm that had cleared the day before, were edged with a fierce line of gold.

"It was flippin huge," Junkrat said. He'd rolled over so he lay on his back over the cabin-top above Lucio, his head hanging down the slanted windows. They were both watching the sunrise as Lucio accelerated towards it, out into open water, away from the fog and the sandbanks as the chill burned off and the sun rose.

"What kind was it?" Lucio called over the engines and the water washing past. Mermaids weren't often seen, no one knew if they were rare or simply wary of human contact. People were, and always had been, divided about whether they were dangerous or helpful. Stories of drowning sailors rescued by mermaids were just as uncommon as stories of unsuspecting swimmers being snatched down and devoured or drowned by them.

Lucio had seen more than his fair share. They seemed to share Junkrat's nose for treasure, so naturally, wherever Junkrat went on a dive to explore a wreck or salvage anything of value, almost inevitably there would be glimpses of the half human, half sea creature of various sizes lurking just on the edge of his underwater vision. They kept their distance however, thankfully. 

"Shark," Junkrat replied without inflection.

"Oh," Lucio tried not to think about Angela crouched on the deck of his boat, soaking wet, covered in blood and strapping tourniquets just above where Junkrat's arm suddenly ended. "I'm not gonna lie, was kinda hoping you'd say seahorse."

Junkrat burst out with a brief, wild little laugh. "Wouldn't need your help with that mate."

"I can hope," Lucio replied lightly.

The sun had pulled itself off the horizon with an almost visible jerk, and now it was free and climbing fast. Already the dusty pink and orange at the horizion was dimming, and the sky was turning bluer and bluer. Lucio's depthmeter went from reading fifty feet to two hundred and suddenly  _ no bottom _ and they were off the sand shelf and into deep water. Reluctantly, he turned, and the bow tipped away from the rising sun and they began running parallel to the receding fog, now burning off fast as the sun rose.

"Couldn't just leave it," Junkrat muttered, almost too quiet for Lucio to hear. "It'll dry out and burn when the sun hits it. Bet you anything."

"You said it was huge," Lucio pointed out reasonably. Then went fishing for Junkrat's elusive sympathetic nature, "Might be dead when we get to it!"

"Hurry up," Junkrat sat up, his head pulling out of sight above the cabin-top.

Lucio just grinned. That was about as sympathetic as Junkrat could get.

The fog had thinned but was clinging to the water and the low shore when they reached the north-west side of the island, and the sharp rise of land to the east blocked the early sun. Lucio scowled at the chart plotter and it's mess of x's marking hazards, wrecks and rocks, took  _ Hylinea  _ back a little way and anchored her in sand. He wouldn't have minded swimming in, but Junkrat wouldn’t. Lucio dropped the tiny inflatable he kept for making landings and prayed it's irascible outboard engine would start.

It didn't. The indisputable purpose of all outboard engines being not to move boats to shore, but to move their owners to violence. After several unsuccessful attempts to start it, a number of quick inspections and adjustments, and quadruple checking all applicable measures, Junkrat and Lucio stared hard at the shore. Possibly it would have been faster to run the damn beach. 

"What do you say mate?" Junkrat asked, his tone wasn't weadling, they'd known each other and worked together long enough that Junkrat knew Lucio wouldn't be swayed by weadling.

"Yeah, come on," Lucio sighed and tied a wide loop in the painter of the little boat. "Let's bring it together."

Junkrat rode in the little boat, still tinkering with the engine because he was an optimist at heart. Lucio dropped into the water, hung the painter over one shoulder and struck out for shore, towing Junkrat behind him.

The water was dark this early in the morning, and cold, and Lucio could feel the occasional current of cooler water displaced by some unseen fish. Some were unnervingly large currents of water, displaced by uncomfortably large tales. Blind with his face in the water, and slow towing the boat with Junkrat, Lucio focused on his breathing, and tried not to imagine what could be swimming under him. A minute or two later, it was shallow enough to sink his toes into sand and walk, shoulder deep through the water towards shore. 

"Nice," Junkrat remarked amiably. “Thanks mate.” 

Lucio hauled him up to the water's edge and walked, soaking wet in his pajamas, up the rocky beach and tied the painter to the largest rock he cared to find.

"I'm billing you," Lucio said shaking himself and shivering.

Junkrat was pulling the little inflatable up the rock and sand slope of the narrow beach. "Sure, that's fair," he replied.

The fog still hung thick on the ground here, moving in wisps past them as they hurried together over the rocky beach towards where the shore became a shelf of rock pitted and streaked with pools. Lucio tugged Junkrat to slow down then, the footing was easier but in the uncertain light and the dwindling fog, the pools came up suddenly.

"Round here," Junkrat said as they made their way along.

Even knowing what to expect, the size of the huge mermaid still made Lucio freeze cold. Junkrat, stuck close to his side, stumbled as Lucio stopped short.

The silhouette in the fog was huge, it was sitting up with it's hands planted flat on the rock behind it, long tail trailing into one of the biggest pools, and topped by an almost comically small, pointed head. The brief confusion and flash of amusement died when a drift of fog trailed away, and Lucio realized that the tiny pointed sharks' head was only a mask. It was wearing a sharkskin.

And it had noticed them. Lucio felt unspeakably grateful to be on land and not in the water as the sharks' head mask swung towards them in the dim light and faced them.

"You said mermaid," Lucio said.

"Yes. I told you it was big." Junkrat, damn him, pointed out the absolute unhelpful truth.

"What," Lucio asked, quietly and without much conviction, "Was your plan here?"

"Dunno," Junkrat replied, "Now that you mention it. I think you were my plan."

"Cool," Lucio muttered, then to the huge shape of the monstrous mermaid, "Hey!"

"G'day," Junkrat added brightly, unhesitatingly following Lucio's lead.

The sharks tipped slightly to one side.

Lucio realized he had no idea if Mermaids spoke like humans did. He'd never heard of one talking. Hell, this one might, but he could be Spanish or speak lost Latin for all Lucio knew.

"Hey."

The voice was gravel rough, low and deep enough that Lucio blinked. Beside him, Junkrat went slack-jawed.

"Uh," Lucio scrambled for something to say, something to bring some much needed normality to this situation. "How you doing?"

"We thought you might be dying," Junkrat added helpfully.

"And maybe we could help," Lucio plunged on.

"That was before we had a plan," Junkrat admitted. He raised his right hand to his chin briefly. "We don't have a plan now, but if you have any ideas we're keen to hear them." He snatched his hand back down. It was a gesture Lucio had seen him do a few times, but he never understood why.

"If you need help at all? Otherwise we'll just go, you know, leave you to your own self if you'd rather?" Lucio offered, and crossed his arms, shivering. He remembered he'd put a kettle of water on to boil and with any luck the fire wouldn't have gone out and he might actually have hot water waiting for him if he left right now.  

The shark seemed to stare at them, his mask tipping to face one of them then the other. The silence stretched on. The rising sun cast streaks of light up from behind the island in long golden shafts. The fog, knee high and receding, took on a faint yellow glow.

"Waiting for the tide," the shark said at length.

Lucio breathed out. Time, this shark just needed time. Lucio was good at stalling for time.

"High tide won't be for another," Lucio paused, looked out at the edge of the water, far out past its usual low tide line and scowled. "Five hours? Five and a--"

"Don't need full tide," The shark said, interrupting him then going silent, as though aware of having been rude. Or not. The mask, an upturned shark's head with it's open mouth and pointed teeth hid all expression. He could be belligerent rude under that skin and Lucio wouldn't know. His voice didn’t give much away.

"Well you see the thing is these pools are pretty popular after a storm like the one we've had and long before high tide other folks are going to be coming by like I did earlier and," said Junkrat reasonably. "It's going to get busy here." He stopped short and cocked his head to one side, "Oi, you got a name? I’ll call you anything you like."

Lucio turned to look at Junkrat so fast he nearly broke his neck.

“No,” the shark grunted. 

Lucio was staring in heartfelt incredulity at his friend.

"I mean I can come up with something to call you," Junkrat went on, sublimely unperturbed. "Just need to give you fair warning mate, there's going to be other folks around here and you might want to keep a low profile."

"You are a foremost expert in keeping a low profile," Lucio muttered.

"I'll replace your door," Junkrat shot back.

"I told you I'm billing you," said Lucio, then to the shark, "He's right though."

The shark shrugged. When you were as big as he was, Lucio supposed, you didn't have to worry about a day-tripper accidentally stepping on you, or taking you home as a pet or ornament.

"I'll stay with you," Junkrat said brightly.

"What," the shark grunted.

"What," Lucio heard himself say.

"I'll stay," Junkrat said, "I'm Junkrat, this is Lucio. We'll be here! You're a bit too big for the average beach comber to trouble with but you never know. Might be good to have someone around mate."

"Wouldn't be a problem." The shark held up an anchor on a length of rope. It had been out of sight on the other side of him and it was about half of Lucio's height. The stock had been broken off at the shank. It was larger than the anchors Lucio kept on  _ Hylinea _ .

Lucio and Junkrat started at it politely. The shark looked between them turned the face the ocean, and hurled the anchor, straight out, with a practiced violence that made Lucio flinch.

Twenty metres away the anchor slammed into a conch shell with a sniper's accuracy. The rope was still in the sharks hand, he yanked back, and the anchor shot obediently back to him before it had time to land. The conch had been reduced to dust.

The shark shrugged, "Not a problem."

Lucio stared between the anchor and the shattered conch with his mouth open.

"Nice."

Lucio managed to tear his eyes off the shark to stare at Junkrat. He was beaming.

"Ok," Lucio said. Twenty metres the shark could throw that thing. "Ok. Not going to be necessary."

"Can you do that again?" Junkrat asked, piping up almost before Lucio had finished.

The shark just tipped his head a little again, and hefted the anchor momentarily.

"So I'm gonna--" Junkrat started to walk towards the monstrous shark and Lucio caught his hand.

"One moment, please excuse us," Lucio said briskly as he yanked Junkrat around and down about a foot and a half until they were eye level. He turned them away from the shark a little.

"Oi what gives," Junkrat muttered.

"Are you out of your mind?" Lucio asked at the exact same time.

"Making friends. You're always saying I need to make friends," Junkrat answered with a grin.

"Because I’m trying to tell if we're about to die," Lucio hissed.

By now, the sun was well up behind the island, and the fog was burning off fast. The growing light made the huge shape of the shark more alarming instead of less. Lucio had been in deep water before and turned to find a shark hanging in the water behind him, watching him with hard, intelligent black eyes. With the darkness of several hundred feet of empty ocean below him, and the weight of a hundred feet of water above, the fast, silent, sleek form of the shark had paralysed him long enough to feel every potential death he could endure there. Everytime he looked at this shark, even here, while it was immobile out of the water, Lucio had the same gut freezing panic reaction.

It apparently had the opposite effect on his friend.

"It's friendly," Junkrat said through a grin. "Watch, I'll prove it."

Before Lucio could stop him, Junkrat had pulled free of Lucio's grip, turned and hopped on his uneven feet towards the beached shark. It was looking on with it's sharkskin mask leveled at Junkrat.

"Oi, tell you what, I'll stay and keep you from needing to pulverize any tourist you don't already have a mind to. Anyway, I've got a business proposition for you," Junkrat was closing the distance between them, from ten feet to six.

"Business proposition?" The shark rumbled, he seemed to huff a little sigh, or maybe a laugh. "What could you offer?"

"I have no idea," Junkrat said with a huge grin, "But it's on the table when it occurs to one of us!"

"You have nothing I want."

"Don't count me out just yet Apex Predator my old mate. There's a lot I can offer. Just one thing first."

Four feet, Lucio realized he was biting his lip and had his hands clenched in front of his chest. He always felt like this when Junkrat was about to die, it was fairly common.

"One thing?" The shark repeated.

"Let's see your teeth big guy," Junkrat said through his grin, "'Less that itty bitty shark's head is yours?"

He was inside the shark's reach now. Lucio was holding his breath.

"My... Teeth," the shark said.

Junkrat came to a stop, just barely taller than the sitting shark, right beside him. He pointed to the shark's head mask. "Yeah, what's a gorgeous shark like you eat anyway?"

Someone whimpered softly and Lucio realized it was him. He forced himself to breath out and wondered how he was going to explain this to Angela. If he'd known Junkrat's first instinct upon meeting a half human giant, half bull shark creature would be to, first, run away in terror, then second, flirt with it, he might have brought her.

For the space of one agonizing heartbeat, nothing happened, then Lucio heard something, a quiet rumbling so low Lucio could feel it more then hear it. It rose until Lucio realized the shark was laughing.

"Nothing as skinny as you," The shark managed, he sounded like he was grinning, he was still rumbling with laughter. "Or small as you girl."

"Boy," Lucio and Junkrat corrected automatically and in perfect harmony. The shark took the correction in stride.

"Boy. Too skinny, too small, no harm here," it lifted one of it's huge hands to his mask and began tipping it back.

Lucio, almost despite himself, began to approach with his head cocked to look around Junkrat at the mask as it was pushed back. A human face, and Lucio let out a breath and sagged slightly with relief.

"Nice," Junkrat reached out.

Lucio would have slapped his hand away if he'd been close enough. Junkrat always wanted to touch. There was a reason he only had an arm and a leg left in his name. 

The shark started, it would be blind with his mask half pushed up, and Junkrat's left hand was on it's chin, thumb drawing it's mouth open.

The shark froze. Lucio stopped breathing.

"Where'd you get a gold tooth Sharky?" Junkrat asked, apparently oblivious to the tension, the Shark's rigid immobility or Lucio's incredulity.

No one spoke or moved, just Junkrat, leaning towards the shark's mouth.

"Out of a dead sailor's skull," The shark replied. It's chin moved under Junkrat's hand. "Two hundred years ago."

Lucio resolved that he was going to sit the fuck down with junkrat and drill into him  _ LOOK WITH YOUR EYES NOT WITH YOUR HANDS _ for the eightieth time. If they made it out of here.

Junkrat laughed.  "Cool," Junkrat reached up to poke at the sharkskin mask, "And where'd you get this then? Where'd this-- Ow!"

Junkrat hissed and pulled his hand away. The huge shark had gone to pull his mask back down, and Junkrat had had his hand in the open, jagged mouth when it moved. Blood dripped off the edge of his fingers and he tisked.

"Watch it," Lucio was beside Junkrat even before he noticed he was moving. He reached out to take the hand; shallow cut, nothing bad, needed to be cleaned right away, Junkrat had had worse, then flinched away because the shark moved.

It snapped it's hand up, faster then Lucio could have expected. It was so fast and so accurate and so unhesitating it was unmistakably the action of a predator. Something that killed to eat. 

And it was holding Junkrat's bloody hand.

"Ow," Junkrat went to pull away and then, "Oi, oi, hey ow!" his arm shook briefly as he realized he was pinned.

"Let him go," Lucio snapped stepping back up to the monster as it pushed it's mask a little further up.

"Shut up," the shark grunted, "I know you," It added.

Lucio shut up. Junkrat, one hand clenched into a bloody fist and the other trying to pry open the shark's massive grip on it, didn't.

"You don't know me, how would you even..." Junkrat tugged helplessly at his arm, still snapping out refusals. He was always so confused and alarmed when things went badly after he'd taken a stupid risk.

The shark dragged him in easily, ignoring his ongoing, never ending, automatic chatter. He pulled Junkrat's hand to his mouth and breathed in deep. "I know you," He growled. He tipped his head, opened his mouth and licked a long stripe of Junkrat's blood.

Junkrat started, the long lines of his back going wire taut. He shut up.

"You," The shark said, pushing Junkrat's hand away slowly, "You're the trespasser. The one that can’t stay out of trouble."

"Oi!" Junkrat snapped. This time when he yanked at his hand, the shark let him go.

Lucio realized he was beaming. "Alright," Lucio watched as Junkrat began turning red, "I like him."

"I don't," Junkrat snapped, nursing his hand, "Listen you, I'm not constantly in trouble ya dipstick. It's not like I look for opportunities to get..."

"You said business proposition." The shark cut over his furious sputtering. He planted his huge hands behind him and leaned back again, the picture of ease.

"So what," Junkrat crossed his arms, sulky as a scolded toddler and cradling his cut hand as though it was a mortal wound. Lucio felt no compulsion to tend to it now.

"I think we can arrange something," The shark said.

His mask was still pushed half up his face. If Lucio tipped his head, he could just see the glint of eyes in the shadow of the mask. When he spoke, the gold tooth flashed in the sunlight.

"Call me Roadhog," The shark went on, and grinned.


	2. Junkrat

Eventually, they settled on the term  _ bodyguard _ .

It wasn't exactly what Junkrat would have expected to come out of the conversation with a shark. In fact since he'd left his house this morning nothing had been expected. 

He'd expected, if he was being honest, to find some pieces of a wreck he'd been hunting for a few months now. He'd expected a few pieces of salt crushed wood worn smooth and white by the sand. Maybe a piece of rusty iron or hand blown glass or a piece of a sailor's plate or cup. He'd found stranger things on shore after a storm. Pieces of ancient lignum vitea, immortal wood that had been more valuable than gold. He'd found an exquisitely carved brooch once, made of delicate pink shells and tiny pieces of ivory. Once or twice he'd found bones. He’d made enough money to set himself up very nicely one early morning during a low tide and a driving wind when he found a chunk of ambergris the size of a tire. He was good at finding things.

He had never found a mermaid before. Not out of the water. Not close enough to get a sense of it’s size and strength. And nothing could have prepared him for finding this one.

In the darkness and the fog of the early morning, Junkrat had only been able to see some helpless, broken thing far up out of the water. Then it had turned, whole and strong and unafraid, and Junkrat had felt the stark, hollow terror that made him cold and forced him perfectly still.

He still forgot, sometimes, that his arm wasn't flesh anymore. When he dreamed, it was real and whole, skin and bone and tattoo and suntan. Then he'd see the metal prosthetic, or feel it’s weight, or try to bite his nails and his arm would be cold and hard and heavy and so unbelievably badass he'd almost keep it if he could go back. But sometimes, he'd remember the terror, and the pain, and the blood in the water. Remembered feeling lopsided and too light and the way what was left of his arm had moved too fast through the water with no resistance. Remember the size and speed of the curious and probably confused fish when it closed it's mouth around his arm. It had been powerful in a way Junkrat couldn't comprehend. It had been one of the smaller ones too, only about his size.

The mermaid had sat motionless in the darkness, the dark outline of the fin and long tail, the pointed nose that swung around to face him. Junkrat hadn't been able to breath until he was racing the other way, jumping tidepools and skittering over the stones on his peg-leg. Lucio would know what to do, Lucio wasn't scared of anything and he always knew what to do.

"Business proposition?" Junkrat said, standing in the growing light of dawn in the tidepool strewn rick shelf with Lucio beside him.

The shark shrugged. Beside him, holding his bloody hand and scowling at the cut, Lucio made a small noise. In the vast and ever expanding lexicon of Lucio's nonverbal communications, Junkrat could register this one as "unsure and anxious but curious and engaged with the current proceedings." Junkrat agreed with that.

"Sure," Junkrat said, having no idea where this conversation could possibly lead, "Want to tell me where there's a ship full of treasure around?"

"Which one?" The shark replied.

Junkrat grinned, his chagrin at being pulled around by the shark, called of for being a trouble magnet fading abruptly into nothing. "Yeah mate, we're gonna get along fine."

The sun was well up and the tide had turned, the waves creeping up the long shelf of rock and stranded water. The shark, Roadhog, was peacefully sitting and looking out at the water, his long tail trailing into one of the pools. He would be over 12' in the water, Junkrat realized, looking down at the fat white length of it's tail. He was five feet tall sitting on the edge of the pool.

"I want half," Roadhog said, and Junkrat's gaze went from the gently fanning tail in the tide pool up to the glint of dark eyes in the shade of it's mask.

“Half," Junkrat said blankly.

"You're a treasure hunter," Roadhog shrugged, "I know you've found plenty on your own, more than anyone else. You find more with me, I want half."

"Sure," Junkrat didn't miss a beat, "The new bills are waterproof, that'll be a easy as hell for underwater trade."

Low growl of laughter again, and Junkrat felt the hairs on the back of his neck go up. He wondered how that voice would feel on his skin in the water.

"And for what? You telling me where the wrecks are?" Junkrat went on.

"And keeping an eye on you," Roadhog said with absolute certainty. "You keep stiring things up. In the worst way."

"It's hardly intentional," Junkrat protested.

Beside him, Lucio elbowed him.

"Ok the treasure seeking, that's intentional," He amended, elbowing back with equal force. Having a metal prosthetic was useful when you had to shove an elbow around.

The sun was casting the shadow of the hill over them, and it ended in a bright, hot line, where the water went from dull blue to bright turquoise. That line was sliding towards them as the sun rose and the tide crept in.

"Thing is," Junkrat started, and then was cut off as Lucio looked around suddenly.

"Beach combers," He said, "Check your head."

Away down the beach, two grown ups and four kids were making their way around the wide stretch at the curve where the tidepools turned into Sugar Shell Beach. Even from this distance, Junkrat could see their sunburns.

"Tourists," he remarked.

Roadhog hefted his anchor meaningfully.

"I'll go talk to them!” Lucio started, “I'll just, I'll go have a word." Lucio's voice was pitched a little higher as he stepped around Roadhog, "Go talk to the young family. You work out a business deal. Nice meeting you, in case the tide comes back in before I'm back from stalling for time. See you again, probably, maybe, and I feel there no need to use that anchor, and that accuracy, on kids, I'm on my way."

"Ta!" Junkrat said brightly.

"Thanks," Roadhog added. He gave Lucio an oddly charming thumbs up.

Lucio, his pajamas still wet and his dreads loose over his shoulders, picked his way barefoot over the rocks and straggling seaweed towards Sugar Shell, still muttering.

"He's good at stalling for time," Junkrat said happily, "We'll be fine."

"I know you, not him," Roadhog set his anchor back down. The line of the sun was creeping closer and the ocean was turning it's bright, sunny day shades of turquoise and teal.

"He's the island's pilot, a navigator," Junkrat shrugged, "Best there is. He's got the  _ Hylinea _ , the little pilot boat that goes out sometimes to lead the big ships into Sugar Bay through the sandbars. He knows the bay and the waterways better than anyone. On land anyway." Junkrat amended with a nod.

"Navigator," Roadhog said slowly. 

They both looked after Lucio, he was short and lithe, a natural born hockey player with explosive speed. He had the energy and presence to look bigger then he was. 

Then Roadhog added thoughtfully, "I know  _ Hylinea _ ."

"Sure, he runs me out to my dives in it." Junkrat hesitated. "So you're my, what, guide? informant? Bruiser?"

"Bodyguard," Roadhog said succinctly. "I'll tell you where the wrecks are. You've found a lot of them, but most are buried. Your problem is, you find a wreck, you find a lot of opposition."

"Opposition," Junkrat raised his hand, thoughtfully biting his nails. He felt the cold metal of his thumb against his lip and lowered his hand. "I thought everywhere I dived was just crowded. And... aggressive."

"Everywhere you dive, there's treasure," Roadhog said bluntly.

Before he could worry about that tidbit of information too much, he changed topic, "How'd you get half a tattoo."

When he heard himself say it, he realized it was perfectly true. Roadhog had a tattoo over his round belly, A compass rose and the tentacles of an octopus radiating out from it, with just the ears of some animal before the tattooed human skin changed smoothly into white of a shark skin.

"From before," The shark said without missing a beat.

"Before?"

"Before. Same as this," he raised a hand and touched the nipple ring on his right side. Both his nipples were pierced, and he was wearing a ring on his right hand.

Junkrat opened his mouth and closed it again, staring at the nipple rings, the tattoo, the oddly human flair of wearing a ring. He'd gotten used to mermaids swimming at a distance in the water, seeing them only rarely and envying them for their speed or ability in the water. He had been reminded over and over that they weren't human, whatever they were, he couldn't expect them to act like a human might. Roadhog was breaking all the rules Junkrat had assumed merfolk followed.

"And the name? Can't be too many roads under water can there?" Junkrat tipped his head.

"More than you'd think. Not many hogs though," Roadhog snorted again, "But yes."

"Half net or half profit?" Junkrat said, swinging back to the original conversation as the topic of mermaids became more confusing.

"Profit," Roadhog growled, unerringly following Junkrat's abrupt shifts in topics. "But expenses covered."

"What possible expenses," Junkrat was honestly bewildered, "Hang on, what are you doing with human currency in the waters off Sugar Shell?"

Roadhog bared his teeth in a grin again. The gold tooth was bright in the sunshine, and his two lower canines were unusually big and sharp. Junkrat suddenly remembered the texture and width of the Roadhog's chin, the way he'd been perfectly still and compliant as Junkrat had touched him. Roadhog's tongue had been surprisingly warm on his hand.

Junkrat curled his hurt left hand a little more protectively around the cut. It had stopped bleeding. 

"Just keep it until I ask for it," Roadhog growled. "I'll be keeping track."

Junkrat shrugged and look down the stretch of the pools to see Lucio crouched in the sand making a sandcastle with the little sunburnt kids. The parents were splashing in the surf nearby like a couple of delighted teenagers.

Roadhog turned to look at what Junkrat was smiling at, "Boyfriend?" He asked.

"Nah, Lucio's me best mate," Junkrat shook himself down a little "Told you he was good at buying time."

Roadhog grunted. Then he moved, and there was so much of him, and moving so quickly, that Junkrat took an involuntary step back. Roadhog either ignored Junkrat's flinch or didn't notice, he hefted himself up and then slid sideways and down, sinking into the tidepool to his shoulders. He shifted uneasily, and then turned awkwardly, his tail jamming up against the sides of the pool, until he could rest his arms out of the water.

"That pool can't be big enough," Junkrat said after a pause. Water had splashed out of the tidepool as Roadhog had dropped into it, and again, Junkrat was reminded how big Roadhog was, and how easily he moved.

"It's not," Roadhog grunted, for the first time, he sounded sour.

Junkrat looked out at the edge of the water, the tide was still rising but it would be for the next five hours. Roadhog was jammed inside the tidepool like a pig in a pickling jar. The sun was almost over the edge of the hills, and the heat was rising. 

"I'll keep you company," Junkrat said brightly, "Tell me about these wrecks."

Roadhog looked up at him, he was at ankle height, and in a moment of fellow feeling for this fish out of water, Junkrat flopped down on the stone beside him to get on the same eye level. He lay on his side, head propped up in one hand, his prosthetic knee bent and his peg leg planted.

Roadhog studied him. His mask was still tipped up his face, only barely covering his eyes, and again, Junkrat was struck by how human he looked out of the water. The big chin and square jaw and the wide, full lipped mouth looked normal, bluntly handsome. But Junkrat had seen sharks up close, and could easily imagine their dark, intense eyes staring out at him from under the shark-skin mask.

"Where'd you get the mask?" Junkrat asked before Roadhog had a chance of answering his first question. "Why you wear it anyway?"

"Mako skin," Roadhog answered, one question that hadn’t even been asked before going on to another. "And there's wrecks all over. There's more under the sand, then close to the surface, and cargo carriers and privateer wrecks all over. You go for the big supply ships, and you've already found most of the ones easily reached."

"I had no idea I had a type," Junkrat said, cheerfully lying and watching Roadhog's mouth move around his words with unfeigned enjoyment. "Do you use the mask to breath underwater?"

"No," Roadhog, again following Junkrat's change in topic as unerring as a hound after a fox.

"How do you breath underwater?"

"Magic."

"Fine, don't tell me."

They lounged in peaceful silence for a time. The sun was over the foothills to the southeast, and the heat fell over Junkrat like a blanket. The water cast bands of bright white seafoam up the rock shelf towards him. A few clouds scudded overhead and the seagulls were crying over the edge of the Sugar Shell. Out on it's anchor,  _ Hylinea  _ rode peacefully, bow to the freshening breeze. A quiet beautiful morning on Sugar Bay.

"There's about 200lbs of gold in a governor's ship just off of Hellier's shoal," Roadhog remarked. "You could start there."

Junkrat's head automatically did the conversion of gold weight to current market price and produced a number that nearly stopped his heart.  

"Couple of stones too," Roadhog went on, "Emeralds. Maybe more."

"Sweet jesus," Junkrat breathed. "We are going to get along."

~*~*~

An hour went by as the heat rose. Junkrat didn't notice getting hungry, or that Lucio and the young family had wandered away back down Sugar Shell towards town. He didn't realize, as the sun climbed up, that the usually popular spot on the tide pools was empty at this time of the morning.

Hellier's shoal was close, but Roadhog had only a vague idea of how far down the wreck was.

"How do you know there's that much gold?" Junkrat asked, "If you can't dig it up yourself."

"Hurricane last fall," Roadhog had to keep ducking underwater as the sun got high, "It pulled up about six feet off sand off the bottom of the shallows, and dragged it along for a while. Saw the top part of a broken mast, and I let a few of the others dig their way in to look."

"Why?"

"Most of the others hadn't seen it before, curious to see what--"

"Nah, why do merfolk care about land based currency. Unless you use gold as exchange in flippin Atlantas or whatever?"

Roadhog paused, and then ducked under the water soaking himself and crumpling his huge, long body up even further. He surfaced with a grunt. "We don't have currency or trade."

"So," Junkrat prompted. "You can't use it, even if you find it right? Why look?"

"You're just as drawn to it," Roadhog shrugged, "You don't use it."

Junkrat opened his mouth and had nothing to say. "You don't know that," He finally managed.

Roadhog chuckled again, low and slow and gravel rough. Junkrat wanted to touch Roadhog's chest just to feel it.

"I told you I know you," Roadhog growled. "You've found more than anyone, but you're after more. Why?" The question came out like a taunt.

"Fine," Junkrat shifted, feeling sulky that he'd been called out, again. "If it's buried that deep though, I'll need to work a little to get it out."

"There's others," Roadhog shrugged. "I'll tell you which ones you can get to. It changes all the time. Your navigator can tell you that."

Junkrat just nodded, it was getting uncomfortably hot on the flat, open rock of the tide pools, and the water was still rising. The sun was above them, merrily beating down with it's early autumn ferocity. They were into the season where winter nights began creeping up on the summer days, but couldn’t hold out against a sunny day.

"How much room is left in there around your fat tail?" He asked, looking out at the teal water of the ocean and deciding that was too far. The rock shelf went out a long way, and he'd have to walk a good distance before the water was deep enough to cool him down.

"Not much," Roadhog hunkered down over his crossed arms. "Tide could hurry the hell up-- hey!"

Junkrat sat up and dropped his legs into the water beside the shark. "Nice, he remarked. As he'd hoped the water was pleasantly cool on his foot, but warmer at the top.

"Don't even think about--" The shark growled.

"Ahhh," Junkrat dropped into the tidepool with Roadhog, avoiding most of the sea urchins and starfish on the edges. The pool was one of those that had carved out a natural fissure in the rock. Not big but reasonably deep, and got a little bigger  on the lower surface, the inside shaped a little like an old lightbulb. "Better."

The water was delightfully cool after the top foot or so. It would get warmer as the sun rose, but for now it was refreshing. Even if he was crammed in with a shark twice his height and several times over his weight.

"I'm breaking our deal," The shark said, wincing as he accidentally elbowed a sea urchin trying to get away from Junkrat.

Junkrat grinned, and looked down into the water to find that a crab had attacked his peg leg and was now attached to it. He hoped it felt accomplished. Keeping his good leg off the bottom and preferring to drift closer to the shark and not into the seaweed covered walls of the pool, Junkrat went back to the previous topic.

"So you let us know when there's a wreck exposed," He said, he raised his hand to his mouth, almost bit cold metal instead of a thumbnail, and put his hand down again.

"Yes," Roadhog growled, "Get out. You don't even need to be here."

"Neither do you," Junkrat said, absolutely sure that was bullshit but willing to say it anyway just to stay where he was. "So...."

"It takes more effort, and it's not what I want right now," Roadhog snarled. There wasn't room to keep his arms on the edge of the pool without pressing against Junkrat, he was wider on the sides with his pelvic fins, but only marginally less so on his front with the fin on his back and his belly to negotiate. He was stuck face to face with Junkrat and Roadhog didn't seem to know what to do with his hands.

"Oh," Junkrat blinked, "So, you can survive out of water."

Out of the shade of the shark's head mask, Roadhog's dark eyes glared at Junkrat. They were at eye level for the first time, their chins just touching the water. Roadhog's long body bent in a awkward looking U around the bottom and back up the pool, the long blade of his tail was shoved up behind Junkrat's back.

"Look," Junkrat wheedled, "It's hot out there. Nice in here, with the seaweed and algae and crabs and spiny death balls."

"And a bull shark," Roadhog prompted.

"And you," Junkrat nodded seriously, "Nothing to be scared off."

Roadhog huffed. "You had better sense earlier this morning," he growled.

He did speak low enough that Junkrat could feel the words in the water. They were nearly chest to chest, and the low rumble of his voice actually vibrated, like a whale's song.

"Hey."

Junkrat realized he was smiling, looking stupidly at Roadhog's chest. "Hmm?"

"You're not helping," Roadhog growled.

"I'm extremely helpful," Junkrat flicked his eyes up to Roahogs and smiled wider. "And yes, Lucio and I were a little awkward this morning, partly because I woke him up by running through his door without opening it, partly because you do make something of an impression don't you? But mostly because I've already lost one quarter of my limbs to a shark so there were some associations that came to mind seeing you."

"I know," Roadhog growled, still unsure where to put his hands, "This shark. I saw. Now, out, you take up a lot of space for a scrap--"

"Not you," Junkrat frowned, confused and wondering if they'd switched topics without him noticing, "Did you? No, it wasn't as big... What shark? You saw??"

"This," Roadhog went to reach up, then stopped himself, his mouth snapped shut.

Junkrat scowled in concentration, then suddenly, his expressions wiped clean as he looked up.

The half human, half bull shark creature measuring at least twelve feet long from head top to tail tip was trying to cram himself into the tide pool wall to avoid touching Junkrat. Avoid hurting him.

"That was the shark? That shark, the one that bit... You killed that..." Junkrat tried to frame words around the thought and found he couldn't quite do it. "You killed the shark that tore off my arm."

Roadhog just growed, there was the same buzz on Junkrat's skin, he was still edging around, trying not to crowd the skinny, supremely unconcerned human.

"Thanks mate," Junkrat said, stunned and unable to get anymore out. Questions were piling up at the tip of his tongue, a lot of questions that he didn't know how to say, or what the answers could possibly be.

Roadhog stopped fidgeting around and looked steadily back at Junkrat from under the edge of the sharkskin. The shark that had attack Junkrat over a year ago. A terrifying few seconds that Junkrat still had nightmares over, something that changed the rest of his life. It was dead.

Junkrat put his hands flat on Roadhog's chest, wanting to feel his voice the next time he spoke, surprised, again, by the warmth of his skin. The sharks he'd touched before had all been as cool as the water. Roadhog was warm as a human ought to be.

Roadhog went very still in his tiny pool, wrapped around Junkrat, carefully minding where and how quickly he moved. He could crush Junkrat in this pool, or drown him, even by accident. He took a breath, and Junkrat could feel the rise in his chest as he did.

"You saw," Junkrat said at length.

Roadhog seemed to hesitate, then nodded. Junkrat stared at his mismatched hands.

"And you killed the shark?" he couldn't help a little giggle, "Seems a bit drastic."

Another pause, then a shrug. Junkrat shifted his gaze from his hands to Roadhog's dark eyes.

"I'd have been back in the water a lot sooner if I'd known, I won't lie to ya," Junkrat had cracked a grin. "You've been my bodyguard more'n a year now."

Moving slowly, Roadhog relaxed, and left his hands trailing at his sides. "Guess so."

Junkrat grinned suddenly, then burst out laughing when Roadhog went on.

"I'll expect backpay."

~*~*~

Lucio arrived with a tote bag shortly after Junkrat and Roadhog had settled on a comfortable means of sharing the tide pool. They were facing each other, leaning back with their arms resting on the rim of the tide pool, Junkrat's mismatched legs crossed against Roadhog's huge belly. The huge tail was still crammed awkwardly down and around their little pool, the end of the tail just behind Junkrat's back.

It was late morning and the tide was starting to wash little streams of water up to them, rising closer. The sun was shining with predictable clean, unaffected resilience. Lucio, dressed now in his tank top, boardshorts and deck shoes with his dreads neatly tied up, stared down at them from behind his shades.

"Cozy," He remarked after a beat.

Junkrat winked up at him, "We're good here, what you got?"

"Breakfast," He sat down cross legged on the edge of the tidepool, fishing through his sailcloth tote and coming out with a cup of boba tea and a straw. Junkrat eagerly accepted it while Lucio went on apologetically, "Wasn't sure what you liked, just got you some of the mango-green." He held a cup out to Roadhog, a little uncertain, but the shark just accepted it with a nod. 

The clear plastic cup and it's film sealed lid looked tiny and ludicrously fragile in his hands.

"And sandwiches," Lucio rummaged a little further, "Mei made a cake for you, and I got some sweets."

Junkrat stabbed his straw through the plastic film on his cup of boba and downed almost half in one go.

"You're the greatest," Junkrat beamed at him, "And my new bodyguard knows where there's a heap of gold lying on the ocean floor."

Lucio, unwrapping a sandwich, looked up with his hands gone still.

"You want to dive?" He asked.

"Yes," Junkrat said quickly. They hadn't talked about how much diving Junkrat had been doing. Which had been easy because there hadn't been any diving for over a year. They weren't going to talk about it now.

Lucio shut his mouth and looked back down at the sandwich. "Cool, where?"

"Hellier's shoal," Roadhog supplied. He was sipping his boba with his pinky extended, the cup looking tiny between his thumb and forefinger.

"Thanks mate," Junkrat accepted a ham and cheese sandwich as Lucio passed it to him.

"Hellier's is sand all the way down, but only after you get over Long Shoal and the reefs there," Lucio remarked, "How far is the wreck? I got steak, veggie or chicken and bree."

"Veggie," Roadhog grunted, then to Junkrat's mild surprise as Lucio wordlessly unwrapped the sandwich and passed it over, "Thanks."

"He said a hurricane pulled up all the sand before," Junkrat shoved a half chewed mouthful of ham and cheese into one cheek. He sat up slightly with the huge, crusty sandwich in one hand and half empty boba in the other. "Can't be too hard to blast that up.

"Not easy to get out there," Lucio said, peeling back the crusts on his chicken and bree. He kept his eyes on the sandwich and went on carefully, "Not many folks go out that way either. You won't have company."

And there was the thought that had been bumping incessantly against Junkrat's brain. They'd never looked at Hellier's shoal for wrecks because there were a lot of white tip sharks out that way. More than elsewhere. A lot more. Junkrat froze in mid chew. He felt Roadhog's tail flick idly against his back.

Lucio broke the crusts up and tossed a few pieces out to the interested seagulls. They never screamed or fought when he fed them, they seemed to have learned generations ago that Lucio was going to get to all of them. There were about a dozen of them patiently waiting to his right.

"Right, thanks for the reminder," Junkrat said around his mouthful. He swallowed, suddenly not really all that hungry after all. 200lbs of gold was a deeply motivating factor, however, white-tip sharks, often a lot of white tip sharks, were a deterrent.

He started suddenly, feeling a buzz on his skin and blinking up at Roadhog. He hadn't made a sound Junkrat could have heard, but the vibration he'd made in the water was enough to get his attention. It echoed in his chest. Roadhog had finished his veggie sandwich and boba tea and was watching Junkrat from under the edge of his mask.

"Tomorrow," Junkrat said, looking back down at his sandwich. "We'll go tomorrow, while we have the weather window. You have anything on Lucio?"

"Free as a bird," Lucio said with a shrug. He was feeding one of the seagulls his last crust out of the palm of his hand.

Junkrat watched the pearly white seagull's carefully planned, gentle movements, it's beak closing slowly over each chunk before pulling away and devouring it. Junkrat was pretty certain that any seagull would rather starve than risk nipping Lucio.

"Tomorrow?" Junkrat looked back at Roadhog.

The big shark just shrugged. "That's your boat?" He tipped his head towards  _ Hylinea _ , who was riding a little rougher now that the tide was coming up under her.

"Yeah," Lucio frowned out at it, "The one suffering under a shortening anchor chain."

"I'll come find you, lead you in," Roadhog said, "Tomorrow after dawn."

Lucio nodded, and Junkrat bit off a chunk of ham and cheese then jerked up and tipped his head back, holding his sandwich high as a wave washed over the tide pool, dunking cold ocean water into their pool.

"Damn," Junkrat muttered around his slightly doused mouthful.

"You're over half tide now," Lucio was snickering at him, safe above the waterline still.

Lucio split the remaining steak sandwich with him, and all three of them shared Mei's brownie cake with mint filling. By the time he was finishing, Junkrat had to move to sit on the edge of the pool with his feet and legs dangling in the water and waves washing up over his thighs. Roadhog was up a little further up out of his pool, looking as cheerful as Junkrat had seen him yet.

They packed up the picnic lunch, and Lucio wandered off to check the inflatable boat they'd taken ashore.

"You haven't gone diving much this year," Roadhog said after a while.

Junkrat had been placidly looking out at the horizon, sitting up out of the pool beside his new bodyguard and leaning back on his hands with his feet propped up on Roadhog's belly under the water. "Not at all. Found a chunk of ambergris after I lost my arm."

"Good timing," Roadhog remarked, then unswervingly went back on topic, "You be able to dive tomorrow?"

"Sure," Junkrat shrugged, forcing nonchalance, "I'm always able to dive."

Another high wave washed up, flooding over Junkrat's waist and making the seaweed streak up one way, then down the other as it went out.

"How do you breath underwater 'Hog?" Junkrat asked for the second time that morning.

"Magic," Roadhog grunted.

"Fine," Junkrat nodded.

Another wave, and Junkrat sighed.

"Almost time eh?" He said after a minute.

Roadhog grunted, and twisted awkwardly, knocking Junkrat's feet off his belly as he turned, shifting until he was facing up the shore beside Junkrat, his arms crossed before him on the rim of the pool. The stone was underwater by inches now.

Unperturbed, and having kept his feet up while Roadhog shifted, Junkrat settled his feet down just above the notched blade of Roadhog's dorsal fin, and made himself comfortable again. Then, following an impulse he didn't bother to try and understand, Junkrat idly raised one hand and cupped the edge of Roadhog's jaw.

Roadhog froze. He was a only a head shorter than Junkrat, rising out of his tidepool as the water came up, and Junkrat tipped his head to the side, watching him.

Junkrat's fingers slipped down over his cheeks, over his chin and down to his neck, gently running to his shoulder and back up, working his way to the throat and and then up the other side with the backs of his fingers. He could feel Roadhog's pulse under his skin, quick and strong and heavy, feel the rise of scars, the skin rough and scruffy, prickly with white hair.

"I don't have gills," Roadhog said, a little dourly. Junkrat could feel his voice against his fingers. "If that's what you're looking for."

Junkrat snorted with laughter. "Worth looking." He kept his hand on the side of Roadhog's neck, wondering at the warmth of his skin, so human. It occurred to him that he might be the first person to actually notice that. Half human creatures of all kinds being reliably rare, reclusive and dangerous.

"Why you letting me get away with this?" Junkrat heard the question before he realized he was asking it.

"What?" Roadhog lifted a little higher out of the water as another big wave rolled around them. Junkrat kept his hand gentle on Roadhog's neck.

Junkrat shrugged, he was never particularly good at parsing out what he was feeling, and usually inspiration for speech at times like this was hit or miss. "Well, am I bothering you?" That was too weak a term for what Junkrat could be described as doing. He was crowding a bull shark trapped in a tidepool just to see if the huge creature would let him.

Roadhog looked away from him, the mask tipping towards land. "You are absolutely bothering me."

"Want me to stop?" Junkrat found he was brushing his thumb back and forth over the line of an old scar, thin and raised, invisible under the edge of Roadhog's jaw. There was something hard under the skin there, faintly triangular shaped. Some scarring maybe.

"Doesn't matter," Roadhog growled, the finally moved, pulling his neck away from Junkrat's hand. He was still looking at the hills up the shore with his arms were crossed in front of him and his hands were closed into fists. "Tell me why you're pushing your luck though."

Junkrat snorted, "Don't need luck with you mate. You're a safe bet." He said this with absolute conviction. "You've been my bodyguard for a year apparently, I ain't scared of you." He put the backs of his fingers against Roadhog's chin, his thumb just on the wide curve of his bottom lip.

The mask tipped fast, Roadhog looking up at Junkrat again for a second, his shadowed eyes glinting under the edge of his mask. "We'll see."

Junkrat pulled his hand away a little reluctantly, and Roadhog's hand opened and moved very slightly, as if about to catch it. He didn't though.

"Just about full tide in an hour or so," Junkrat remarked, "Thought you said you didn't need full tide?"

"I don't."

"Then..." Junkrat blinked and looked down at him. "Why you still here."

Roadhog shrugged.

"Ah, guess I'm not bothering you too much huh mate?" Junkrat's grin grew until he was beaming.

"Shut up," Roadhog growled. He dunked his head under water, and came up into the full force of Junkrat's grin. He growled again and shook himself.

Then Junkrat yipped in surprise as Roadhog suddenly hefted himself up, planting his hands and straightening his arms and rising out of the tidepool all at once. Junkrat jerked out of the way as he brought a wave of water up with him, then further away as Roadhog pulled himself forward. Then his tail whipped up out of the pool and through the shallow water over the shelf, sending an arc of water over Junkrat.

The force of it knocked him back slightly, trying to shield himself from the full brunt of it, and he spluttered and shook sea water out of his eyes.

Roadhog was lying full length down the rock shelf of the tidepools, pulling himself easily towards the ocean on his belly, using his anchor and his long tail the deeper he got. Junkrat stared, mouth open, and suddenly, he needed to get out of the water because there was a shark in here with him, and it was huge. He swallowed hard and forced himself to his feet, the water almost up to his knees. 

He'd stuffed himself into the same tide pool with this shark. He'd told him he wasn't scared.

"Fine how-do-you-do," Junkrat muttered, forcing himself to stand his ground. Roadhog was a long monster in the waves, moving easily towards open water. "Oi!" Junkrat splashed after him, trying to avoid the pools. He was up to his waist before he stopped and watched.

Roadhog had more then enough water to swim in now, and his fin was already slicing through the water fast and smooth. He was swimming circles in a steady, easy pace, it reminded Junkrat of the circles he would walk after a long open water trip. Cooped up in Lucio's  _ Hylinea  _ or one of the little sailing boats he'd help deliver for days or weeks. Getting onto shore he'd jog or walk aimlessly for hours, marvelling at how far he could go without running into anything.

Then his heart stuttered and skipped a beat, some ancient, animal sense in his mind jerking out of a paleolithic stupor to full alert because he was waist deep in water, and a shark the size of a jeep was charging him. Not a shark, he snarled at his own terror. Not a shark, Roadhog. Ate a veggie sandwich for breakfast and said thanks over it. Drank boba with his pinky out.

The sharkfin was arcing towards him fast enough to raise white water from it's cutting edge. Junkrat stood his ground as the dark shape of the shark came into the shallows again, raising a wave of water before it with the fin cutting through the top. Not a shark.

He remembered the warmth of Roadhog's tongue on his hand.  _ I know you. _

The fin was ten feet away when it diverted, and the long, dark shape rushed past him, in a tight circle and then slowed, circling him again before it turned white, and Roadhog's human half lifted to the surface of the water. The wave he'd raised washed up to Junkrat's shoulders and buffeted him sideways.

"Your heart rate's pretty high," Roadhog remarked.

"You can go to hell," Junkrat replied amiably. He watched Roadhog, lying on his back in the water, make a wide circle around him. He was amazingly fast in the water. And graceful in a way Junkrat could have expected from a shark but not from anyone as big as Roadhog. Again, he noticed the half formed tattoo on the big belly, and the place where the human skin melted smoothly into the cold white belly of the shark. Half a tattoo.  _ Got it before. _

"I'll find  _ Hylinea  _ tomorrow," Roadhog rumbled, interrupting Junkrat's train of thought.

"At the wharf with the little sun-bleached teal house on top," Junkrat said, then remembered that from under the water, that wouldn't mean much. "Wharf he lives on is out on is past the sandbar. There's crushed shells for a sea floor and the wharf timbers are pretty new." 

Then suddenly, Junkrak remembered how huge the ocean was, and how improbably their meeting, and how easy it would be for Roadhog to never come back. "Don't stand me up though mate."

Roadhog snorted, "I'll come."

"You'd better. I'm paying you," Junkrat cut himself off, raised his hand to his mouth and this time it was his left hand and he gnawed a fingernail.

Roadhog swam another circle around him. His mask was still pushed back on his head, the face of the dead shark looking adorably alarmed upside down.

"You've been diving," Roadhog said after a minute, "And raking the gold out of my territory for as long as you’ve been diving. As long as you're going to keep that up, I'm going to be there for it."

"What, your territory..." Junkrat blinked, trying to picture the lines that governed the official borders on Lucio's charts, remembering that human geography was going to be largely useless to a half human marine dwelling creature, and blinked again. "Territory?"

Roadhog snorted a laugh at him. "Yeah, so as long as you are trespassing, you're my problem. Got that?"

"Sure," Junkrat blinked, and found himself grinning. "Sure! Your problem. Got it. See ya tomorrow."

Roadhog grunted and turned over in the water, fins casting water and foam up that caught the sunlight. The long, smooth line of tail slipped along the side of Junkrat's leg as he swam out, and the fin vanished under the water at the drop off.

"You idiot."

Junkrat turned, grinning stupidly, to find Lucio up to his knees in the surf, looking down at him with an exasperated mix of impatience and amusement. The little inflatable boat floated at his side, looking like a dog on a leash with Lucio holding it's painter.

"What?"

"You didn't even ask him to tow us back to  _ Hylinea _ ."


	3. Roadhog

Roadhog had lost track of how long he'd been living in the water.

He hadn't really meant to become what he was. It had happened purely as a result of situation and circumstance. It had been a means of survival, and he was good at surviving.

He'd gone to the ocean to make a hole in it, hide or die or work until what had happened on shore couldn't affect him. He had not expected, or intended, to live for days and weeks until seasons had passed and the ships sailing over his head had gone from silent wood to thundering steel. It was cold, and dark, and he was alone.

And he was alive, which was possibly the most perplexing thing, for many reasons.

There were others like him, runaways or outcasts or simply ones who'd found their way into their new bodies by accident and stayed. They were few and far between, and they typically avoided Roadhog in silent, leery respect bordering on animosity. They staked out huge territories, and only ever came close to him during disasters, hardships or times they had to work together.

Or when they found something of ridiculous value. One of the others had found a diamond bigger than her head after a few days of looking through a tiny smuggler’s wreck. Other times bottles would be found in their crates, still safely sealed and lasting an age, their contents accruing value as they became more and more rare. Other times it was just little things, war medals and jewels and weapons and wedding rings. A painting had fallen like a leaf down through the water once, and landed face down on the sand. It had been a painting of a landscape, a decent one if somewhat sentimental, and divers had looked for it for days. It rotted away while the hunt was still going for it. The others liked to show off what had been found in their territories. Something about living alone and undisturbed underwater brought out the sentimentalist in everyone.

Divers had become more common, the seasons had gone by and the only thing Roadhog had seen before were swimmers. A wooden hulled ship would hang immobile in the waves above him, put a wooden grate over the side for a swim platform and the sailors would swim and dive and lie in the water while he swam under them, watching. Then divers came, and then kept coming, and staying under for longer and longer. Roadhog learned to keep his distance when he saw one diver calmly shoot a white tip shark as big as he was and kill it stone dead in the water. The divers didn't really look human, bigger than a human, with the plates over their eyes reflecting what light they found.

Around the time that divers started exploring the wrecks in his territory, Roadhog left the water for the first time.

He didn't really know how to at first, or if he could go back, but the process made sense as long as he didn't try to wonder why. But his legs and feet were his own again, and his tattoo was whole, and he was still wearing his old torn off shorts and worn out boots. He stayed on land the first time just long enough to have a hot meal and listen to the language around him. He’d looked with quiet bemusement at the changes people had made, and wondered how long he'd lived in the water.

He left the water more often after that, somewhat regularly, taking the time to learn the language, to eat the food ashore and spend the gold he found on the ocean floor. Most people didn't ask any questions when he produced a three hundred year old gold coin to pay for ice cream. When you're 7' 4" tall and weigh enough to answer any question non-verbally, people don't ask many questions. He suspected that the coins he was paying with were worth more than what he was buying anyway.

Then one day, he'd swum back down into his territory after a sojourn ashore, and found one of his favorite wrecks had been blown open. He'd stared at the huge hole on the ocean floor in astonishment. The sand was starting to drift in, and there were dead fish in the water. Something huge had blasted the ocean floor with enough precision to tear the sand up into the water for as far as he could see, and turn the half submerged, mostly rotted wreck into a blasted crater. The gold was gone.

Roadhog endured a few days of other merfolk trespassing into his territory to take a look at the damage, and a few days later he was chasing one away when they both felt a horrible thump and shudder in the water. Both he and his quarry stopped short, looked at each other and then Roadhog turned, racing towards the explosion because it was happening again, already.

The sand was cast up in a storm around another wreck, and whatever Roadhog had been expecting, a single diver, with one leg and hardly any gear, swimming down towards the blown open wreck wasn't it. Roadhog paused, just out of sight, and watched the long shape of the diver reach the wreck, trailing bubbles and moving easily through the blasted seafloor.

Roadhog grabbed the other merman as he tried to sneak down, edging towards the wreck and it's lone diver. Roadhog hadn't been able to fit into that sunken ship to see what it contained, but it was the same type and age that the first had been. And that one had been stacked with gold, and there had been boxes of supplies that would be worth a fortune to a collector, and a carved stone statue of a man set with rubies. This one was apparently just as well supplied, because the Roadhog could feel the diver's heart beat jump and race even from this distance.

The merman managed to get one tentacle wrapped around Roadhog and punched him in the jaw while he was looking towards the diver. A brief exchange of violence followed, which was somewhat unfair because Roadhog didn't carry his old anchor just for fun. The half human, half octopus, all regret merman swam off at speed after only a few seconds, and Roadhog was free to circle in to check on the diver. The trespasser and thief that was two for two at treasure seeking as far as Roadhog could tell.

He didn't carry much gear, just a single tank and far fewer weights than Roadhog had seen before. He was missing a leg, and the prosthetic was a long fin to match the flipper he wore on his remaining foot. He was just in swim shorts, and the harness for his tank had rubbed the skin of his shoulders red and raw under his suntan. There was a tattoo of a skull down his right forearm, and he was tall, or would be standing, and wiry with a shock of yellow hair that billowed around his head in an unruly cloud.

Roadhog swam circles around the blasted wreck, and the little outline of the boat above it. He watched the diver levering and hammering an wedging oak and iron boxes out from where they'd rusted into place, bullying them into a steel basket on the end of the wire cable. The diver tugged twice at the cable, and it went from slack, to taut, and then the little boat dipped in the water as it took the weight of the basket and it's load. But it rose through the water and settling sand, and vanished out past the surface.

The basket plunged down empty into the water, and went up full five times before the diver had finished his ferreting around. The wreck had been thoroughly explored. Cabin doors broken open where they had swelled or rusted shut, the wooden grate over the cargo busted open and poked though. Roadhog was starting to feel like a sheep dog, running circles around the diver and the boat above it while the octopus returned, with a couple of others, and a pod of dolphins, actual dolphins, came to investigate. This was about as crowded as Roadhog's territory ever got. But he wasn't going to let anyone else solve his problems.

And the diver rising up to the little green boat after pillaging the wreck in Roadhog’s territory was absolutely a problem.

The diver stopped in his accent suddenly, and looked out into the water around him. With the sand whirling, still settling slowly after the blast, it was darker than it usually was, and Roadhog knew he was out of the divers sight. But the diver looked directly at him, and Roadhog felt the faint stutter in the water that was the divers heart skipping a beat.

Roadhog kept swimming his long arc, edging further into the sand and darkness, away from the diver and waiting for the inevitable, panic-stricken break for the surface. Divers always broke for the surface when they saw him.

Then the diver struck out towards him, and Roadhog was suddenly incredibly aware that there were a lot of other creatures in the water that might hold a grudge against a human who was cleaning up the gold on the ocean floor. Even if it wasn't in their territory, the other merfolk coveted the gold, like any prisoner would waiting for their chance at freedom to spend the fortune they'd accrued.

Roadhog turned, aimed himself at the nearest and largest of the other merfolk, and charged. There was enough of a flurry in the water that the diver slowed, backed water, and then turned and swam back up to the boat above him.

The diver came back, and came back, and came back, and Roadhog watched from a distance because he didn't care about the gold, but he did care that the other merfolk seemed anxious to investigate. So far, the diver had stuck to pillaging Roadhog's territory, exclusively coming down where Roadhog had first dibs on any activity. But the merfolk that boarded on either side were getting angry. Eventually, they reasoned, the trespasser would leave Rodhog’s territory, and then there would be hell to pay. He was having to fight to keep his territory empty. He was having to fight just to keep the water around the diver clear. 

He was fighting the same damn merfolk that always showed up when this particular trespasser came, when Roadhog's diver died in the water.

It was months now, years even, since the diver had started coming. Two years or more of watching in perplexed amazement as the diver found, without a doubt, where the treasure would be. Two years of swimming slow, quiet circles around him, watching the little green boat go overhead in all weather and at all times wondering if the diver was onboard. Two years of worrying that one of the other merfolk would get bold enough, or anxious enough, or fast enough, that they'd take Roadhog's problem out for him. Do him a favor. 

And in all that time, each time the diver looking up, he could unnervingly find Roadhog in the dark water, and would swim towards him instead of away.

Roadhog had been slamming his anchor into the snarling face of a meroctopus when he froze, because the diver's heart rate had gone into a panic, and there was blood in the water.

The sharks, the real sharks, hated the diver. The explosions his used to clear the sand terrified them and made them wild. 

The other merfolk, seeing Roadhog freeze and turn suddenly, attacked him en mass, seeing an opportunity to put the frighteningly huge, unreasonable mershark down. Roadhog found himself in a sudden scrum of seven merfolk all intent on a kill and lost his patience and reserve. His diver was dying in the water, and he couldn't move. Roadhog lashed out with a fury he thought he’d left on shore a long time ago.

By the time one of the merfolk was dead and another was twisting away in the water wracked with pain, the diver was hanging, lifeless and still in the water over his new wreck. The skinny body looked helpless and small, ribbons of blood trailing down through the water, washing into nothing as a few sharks circled.

Roadhog had charged the sharks, scattered them and catching the diver in his arms without knowing what he was doing. This was an answer, a solution to a trespasser who was far too successful to let run rampant. Roadhog undid the belt of weights around the diver’s waist and let them fall, held the wiry body hard against him and swam up, racing up towards the little green boat and shoving that lifeless body up towards its side.

It broke the water and floated, hanging like a dead thing for less then a second before it was jerked up, into the sunshine and the air and away from him. The diver's blood was in his mouth, and the sharks were below him again, circling up.

His own fury surprised him. He'd lived reasonably peacefully with the real marine life in his territory, but the thought of the diver hanging lifeless in the water after his heartbeat had gone from placid to panic was enough to break that streak. He didn't really know why it made him so angry. Didn't know why he kept the body of the mako that had taken the diver's arm.

Didn't want to think about another indeterminate number of seasons alone in this bright, beautiful water, watching divers swim away instead of towards him.

He'd spent an inadvisable amount of time ashore after that. He knew it was stupid to look for one diver on an island of lifelong seafarers of all sorts. Especially since the one he was looking for was already buried somewhere. The long suntanned body had no pulse when he'd reached it.

The mako he'd killed was skinned on shore. Roadhog had it made into a mask because sharks had a useful understanding of fear and consequence. The other merfolk left him alone again. The cavities where the treasure had been filled with sand and disappeared.

Life returned to it's normal, untroubled, unmarked rhythms. Time passed without anything to differentiate one day from any other.

The storms that meant autumn began, and Roadhog guessed it had been a year since the diver had died here. A year since anyone had swum towards him instead of away.

He beached himself the first morning after a storm, and was looking forward to boba and ice cream and a day warm under the sun when his plans changed drastically. The long suntanned body with a peg leg and a metal arm standing in the early morning mist with a brave boy beside him.

The diver's blood in his mouth again. _I know you._

He wasn't dead. He was alive and shore-bound and as reckless as Roadhog should have imagined and didn't seem to fear Roadhog in the slightest. He kept trying to bite the nails of a hand that didn't exist anymore. He had no reservations about crowding Roadhog, or bullying him, or using him as a damn foot rest.

The first time Roadhog had been touched since he'd gone to the water outside of a fight. First time his size and strength were reassuring instead of terrifying. He watched a seagull eating bread crusts with exquisite care out of the palm of Lucio's hands and wished for the dexterity to be that gentle. But Junkrat didn't scare easily, or at least didn't back down, so maybe, just maybe there was enough brash fearlessness or bravado or idiocy there that Roadhog could be a little rough without driving his diver off.

He broke two territory boundaries on his way into the harbor the next day, hardly noticing as he swam into the shallows in the dark of the early morning, looking for the hull of the little pilot boat. The pale light from a foggy morning wasn't much, but when he poked his head out of the water, it was more than enough to find a bright teal house, perched  on the end of a wharf, with a bright green boat tied up alongside.

And Junkrat, sitting on the edge of the wharf above the boat in the early morning fog.

Roadhog pushed his mask up to get a better look, and swam forward slowly. Above him, Junkrat put his right hand to his mouth and then dropped it.

"Hey," Roadhog called up.

Junkrat started, head snapping around, and all at once, his face lit up. He had, Roadhog reflected absolutely no filter between what he felt and what he showed. The very worst liar Roadhog had ever, and probably would ever meet.

"G'day!" Junkrat pushed himself off the edge of the wharf, dropped down into _Hylinea_ , and went to the edge to look down at Roadhog. "We're all set, Lucio's still asleep but I'll get him up."

"It's alright," Roadhog shrugged, "Lots of time." He swam a little higher out of the water, until he could hook his elbows over the gunnel of _Hylinea_ so he and Junkrat were face to face. The boat tipped very slightly towards him.

"I've got charges made up, and a cable to come down and a basket, you seen us do this all before?" Junkrat paused as Roadhog nodded, "Nice, but listen, where are you going to hide when they go off? You can’t be in the water next to a bomb."

By way of explanation, Roadhog pulled himself up and over the edge of _Hylinea's_ side, the boat tipped a little more towards him and he swung himself inboard. His tail dragged up over the rail, and dropped heavily down the length of the deck and set his anchor beside him.

It was strange to see the familiar green boat from this side. There was a tupperware crate with dive gear piled inside, and a second, smaller crate, an old military issue one banded in steel and locked. There was a grinning grenade on one side.

"Ah," Junkrat had taken a step back when Roadhog had crowded in close, "that'll work. You really can survive out of the water, no problems?"

"Some problems," Roadhog admitted. He would start to loose feeling, and then mobility in his tail after not very long. He was too big to be out of the water much if he kept his tail.

"Cool," Junkrat murmured, he was looking along Roadhog's length, from the human half to the tip of the tail, his head swinging back and forth. Roadhog sat, his hands propped behind him, studying Junkrat just as closely.

He'd gotten the same tattoo he'd had on his arm on his right shoulder. The long skull with two crossed candles. The familiarity of the tattoo was oddly reassuring.

"You said before," Junkrat said, and Roadhog tensed suddenly, because Junkrat was on his knees beside him, both hands flat on his belly, where the human turned to shark. "Before what? When'd you get this mate?"

Roadhog tipped his head a little to one side, watching Junkrat from under the edge of the mask. He thought of the mako shark he wore and glanced at the side of Junkrat's neck. "We're not born," he said quietly after a pause.

Junkrat was tracing the lines of the tattoo over his belly, frowning when they faded and ended in white sharkskin. "Mermaids ain't born? So you become them?"

Roadhog just grunted. He was paying so much attention to Junkrat kneeling over him with his mismatched hands flat on Roadhog's belly it was useless to try and focus on anything else. He was looking at the spot on Junkrat's neck where Roadhog carried a scar now.

Junkrat opened his mouth, then stopped and looked up from his hands and Roadhogs belly to the edge of the wharf where Lucio had stuck his head out.

"Hey! Is he-- Oh... Yeah. Yeah ok, Roadhog's here, ha, wow, ok. Ok." Lucio, wearing nothing but a binder and a pair of shorts ducked back out of sight and then a sailcloth tote bag was hung off the edge of the wharf and Junkrat caught it when it dropped.

"You need anything big guy?"

It took Roadhog a second to realize Lucio was asking him. He'd stooped on the wharfs edge to put a mug down over the boat and then stood to pull a tshirt on over his head. He tugged the shirt into place and was looking down at Roadhog with perfect sincerity.

“Thanks,” Roadhog shook his head up at him.

"Junkrat?"

"I'm good! Ta," Junkrat stepped back, giving Lucio room to jump down.

Lucio landed easily on the pilot house roof and then stood back up on his tiptoes to reach for the mug he'd left on the wharf side above him. He jumped lightly down to the deck without spilling a drop.

Roadhog pulled himself up on the rail, ready to heft himself up and back into the water, but Lucio's hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"Might as well stay inboard with us until we're out on the water," Lucio passed him on his way into the pilot house. Junkrat was scuttling into the bow for the bow line. "'Less you'd rather be in the shallow water!" He called back.

Roadhog subsided, content to watch Lucio and Junkrat move around one another in familiar, well coordinated efficiency. They pushed off from the wharf and the growl of the little boat was much nicer on this side of the water.

He watched the boats on one side and the wharfs and piers on the other, the green lights of the channel markers passing them on the right. Lucio was casually piloting them out, one hand on the helm and cherishing his coffee with the other.

"You doing alright mate?"

Roadhog looked around to find Junkrat beside him.

He grunted, nodding peaceably. It was nice being on the water instead of under it. It was nice having Junkrat and Lucio around. Nice feeling the wind on his skin instead of just current.

Junkrat flopped down on the deck beside him, both of them looking behind them over the inflatable boat tied up at the transom at the fog shrouding back over the harbor and the boats. They stayed together, watching the fog rolling out behind them as _Hylinea_ turned and met the first of the slow, easy ocean swells that had been building overnight.

"Hellier's has a lot of white tips doesn't it," Junkrat said quietly as Lucio revved up and _Hylinea_ nosed up over the water and began to run.

"Not when I'm around," Roadhog replied quietly. He meant it as a promise, but it was also a pragmatic statement of fact. He went to Hellier's when he was hungry.

"Oh, right, 'course," Junkrat was looking up at him, his mouth slightly opened, eyes wide.

Roadhog glanced down and Junkrat looked away.

The fog wasn't a solid wall, but in the time between Roadhog looking down at Junkrat, and then back up, they were out of the fog and riding up over the ocean with the rising sun before them.

"Finally," Lucio muttered in the pilot house.

The boat sped up again, and the bow tipped a little away from the sunrise and out towards open water. Beside him, Junkrat took a quick deep breath of open air. The metal right hand stopped tracking back and forth over the deck and closed into a fist and suddenly opened again. Roadhog watched without comment.

"Long Shoal is a little way away, but you'll be able to guide us in once we arrive?" Lucio called out to them.

"Yep," Roadhog called back. He was still watching Junkrat. He needed to get back in the water, but _Hylinea_ was faster, and they wouldn't need someone in the water until they reached Long Shoal and it’s jagged reefs and rocks.

"Thanks mate," Junkrat said quietly beside.

Roadhog grunted, looking down at him.

Junkrat just shook his head though, and went quiet as they sped on over the rise and fall of the water as they headed out. Roadhog felt it when Junkrat shifted his leg to lean it against him, skin to skin beside each other on the open deck of Lucio's boat.

Lucio slowed after a while, and Roadhog sat up a little straighter. Junkrat just tensed, the metal hand closing into a fist again.

"Hey," Roadhog grunted. He hated talking, he had never been good with words and hadn't spoken to anyone, apart from the occasional one word requests to shop keepers, for a long, long time. But Junkrat had been out of the water for a year. And he'd been dead when he'd left last time.

Junkrat looked up at him, his face was pale under it's suntan. He looked like he hadn't slept the night before. Roadhog had no way to tell him it was going to be alright, that he was safe, that Roadhog was going to kill anything that came close to him. Had no way to say that Roadhog was going to fucking ensure Junkrat's safety from this point on.

"Stay out of trouble," He said instead.

Junkrat blinked, then bared his teeth in a quick, sudden grin that brought some life back into his eyes, he opened his hand again. "I'll be on my best behavior."

"Long shoal," Lucio was turned from the helm, looking over his shoulder at the two of them. "I'll follow your fin Roadhog. You want me to stop, dive down and I'll stop cold."

Roadhog grunted in agreement, hefted himself up on the rail and pulled himself unceremoniously over the side. He hit the water and sank, then he pulled himself down, his tail already feeling better in the water.

 _Hylinea_ rocked above him, and before it's bow, the ocean floor rose suddenly from a hundred and more feet of darkness to the plateau of rock, and sand and reefs that were known for strong, unpredictable currents and fast tides. They were still at low tide now, but _Hylinea_ didn't draw more than six or seven feet of water at it's deepest, and if Lucio was a pilot, he'd have the skills to get them through the maze if Roadhog led him.

Roadhog surfaced the find Lucio and Junkrat looking over the rail at him, and nodded and turned into the water, swimming along the edge of the shoal and in over the first ridge of low water. Lucio followed at pace, the boat keeping a constant speed behind him.

The waters here were busy with fish, bright and warm in the shallow water, and rarely if ever did boats try to sail over it. The sandbars shifted too often, sometimes making long, snaking islands above the water at high tide, and other times dropping away to bare rock. Roadhog led Lucio on and in, avoiding the areas where a drop in the waves might bottom out the boat. Lucio patiently followed him for an hour, stopping cold when Roadhog dived and jumping forwards when a wave lifted him high enough to carry him over a shallow spot.

Hellier's Shoal was behind the three sister shoals that made up Long Shoal, and Lucio overshot the shoal by a short distance for safety, and put down two anchors and secure _Hylinea_ over an area of reasonably deep water. Roadhog broke out of the water again and found Lucio grinning down at him.

"Thanks! You'd make a great pilot for the boats coming in you know, think about it."

Roadhog snorted at the compliment, "he ready?"

Lucio's face fell a little. "Almost," then Lucio looked over his shoulder, and to Roadhog's surprise, hoped over the rail. Instead of crashing into the water, he hung on to the rail with one hand and beckoned, dangling over the water. He cocked his head conspiratorially.

Roadhog swam a little closer in, and tipped his mask up looking at Lucio, hanging like a monkey just above the water.

"Not sure what deal you guys worked out, but this is his first dive in a year, whatever trust he's placed in you, it's real, alright?" Lucio didn't look upset or nervous or even suspicious, just genuinely hopeful.

Which was much more effective, Roadhog though, looking into Lucio's young, handsome face, so sincere and gentle. "I'm going to look after him." Roadhog growled. Everything he said sounded like a threat. He would never, ever manage to say anything to this boy a quarter his size without sounding threatening. He had to learn. Lucio seemed like a boy who deserved the same kindness he seemed to grant others.

"Oi, what are you doing."

Junkrat peered over the rail, shirtless with his harness on, the tank on his back the same familiar one with the spikes on it's shoulders and the chain over it. His mask was perched over his head, almost mimicked Roadhog.

"Gossiping," Lucio said easily. He had his feet against the side of _Hylinea's_ hull and both hands on the rail with his knees bent. He looked perfectly capable of hanging there all day if he wanted.

"Come on," Roadhog grunted, "Ready?"

"Yeah, yeah," Junkrat put both his hands on the mask and paused, pulled it down and check the gauge, air supply, and sat on the lowest part of the rail.

"Look out for him yeah?" Lucio said quietly to Roadhog.

Junkrat dropped back, falling towards the water and Roadhog glanced up at Lucio.

"I'm going to."

Roadhog pulled his mask back down and dropped into the water, sinking and then circling fast around the Junkrat. There was always a moment, when divers hit the water, where they seemed to deeply regret their decisions. They went from being dry to wet, warm to cold, agile and fast to weightless and disoriented and slow. Junkrat seemed to shake himself, look around, then down, and shuddered.

Junkrat's heart-rate went to a panic-fast pace as soon as he righted himself.

Roadhog circled, into Junkrat's line of sight and growled, hoping that Junkrat would feel the sound in the water. He didn't want to touch him until he was a little more calm, didn't want to crowd him. Didn't trust himself, didn’t have the dexterity to touch things without hurting them.

Junkrat's head came up, and his eyes behind their mask locked on Roadhog. The two of them hung in the water, _Hylinea_ above them, the gentle sloping sand of the shoal close below, and the bright clear waters of the southern reach of ocean all around them. Junkrat's heartbeat slowed perceptibly, and Roadhog switched back, instead of circling, getting closer until Junkrat swam towards him, and reached out.

Without thinking, Roadhog held up one hand, and Junkrat caught it. He was trembling, gamely staying underwater and watching Roadhog with all his attention.

You're alright, Roadhog wanted to tell him. There is nothing in this entire ocean I can't protect you from. There is nothing that will ever hurt you again while I'm here. He hummed low in his chest again, hoping, again, that Junkrat could feel it, and knew he could when the hand holding his stopped trembling, and his grip relaxed slightly.

Junkrat nodded after another few minutes, let go of Roadhog's hand and swam up next to _Hylinea_ for the dive basket.

Roadhog circled again. Junkrat seemed to draw mermaids with some unknown power, and Hellier's shoal wasn't exactly on anyone's territory, but more of a troublesome badland that they left alone for the most part. But as soon as Junkrat started blasting, they’d come, and they’d be angry.

Lucio had lowered the steel basket to the water, and in it, the military grade crate of explosives. Junkrat took the basket in one hand, and started towing it down.

Roadhog kept circling, keeping look out and watching the patterns of the schools of fish passing through. Fish like this were better than bird song for checking the area for trouble.  

Junkrat was the same long, quick, focused diver he remembered; the same cloud of yellow hair and the places on his shoulders where the harness for his tank rubbed his skin red and raw. The same long, lean lines of his body stretching and flexing as he worked. Except now he looked for Roadhog, and Roadhog made sure he was always close.

They both swam up and waited on _Hylinea_ while Junkrat detonated the charges he'd laid on the slope under where Roadhog had pointed out the buried wreck. The blast shook _Hylinea_ even where she was a solid distance away, and the thump and shudder of the water was so muted out of it that Roadhog relaxed, without knowing he'd tensed up.

"Did they hurt?" Junkrat asked him.

They both had their masks pushed up, and were waiting in the shade on the aft deck for the sand to begin to settle in the water. Lucio was lying flat on his back on the cabin top above them, his arms out, shades shining in the sun. Roadhog glanced down at Junkrat, wondering what he could possibly mean. Everything had hurt.

"The explosions," Junkrat clarified, "If you were nearby, they hurt you?"

"Not much," Roadhog grunted, only mildly understating the effect the blasts had had on him. The hideous pain and force of the explosions hadn't mattered to him, more importantly, they'd meant that the diver was in the water, meant there was someone who'd swim towards him instead of away.

They went down again, Lucio starting up from his sunbathing and jumping down, alert and ready to be their minder.  

A few sharks had come to investigate the noise, and there would be more coming probably. They flinched back from Roadhog though, and kept their distance so Junkrat was left perfectly alone to check on his work.

The blast had torn a side off the edge of the plateau and found a chunk of the hull, cocked crazilly on it's side, bow pointed way down. Sand was pouring away fast from old oak planking, clearing a larger and larger area. Roadhog watched with quiet, perplexed amazement as Junkrat calmly went about setting another group of explosives.

He had seen people come into the water and use exquisite care to recover things from the ocean floor. They had used brushes. Gentle jets of water. They had taken their time and took notes. They had never seen Junkrat work.

Another half an hour lounging on the deck of _Hylinea_ , while Lucio lay on his stomach this time on the cabin top, and Junkrat and Roadhog sat in the shade of the pilot house. Music played on a little portable speaker as they rode up and along and over the smooth ocean swells. Roadhog sat with his hands propped behind him, as Junkrat lay against his side, lying back over his belly. He never asked, or even checked if he could get away with invading Roadhog's space like this. He just naturally took up space around Roadhog, made touch and connection easy and comfortable.

Roadhog had no idea how to encourage Junkrat's casual invasion of his personal space, but Junkrat didn't really seem to need any.

"It's a lot nicer, diving with you around mate," Junkrat said with his eyes shut.

Roadhog grunted, waiting with perfect expectation for Junkrat to explain himself. He was starting to realize that Junkrat was easily the most talkative people he'd ever encountered.

"Used to take forever, or feel like it, getting down, the blasting, getting all the loot out. Took ages and I'd be flippin’ terrified." Junkrat had his eyes shut, head back over Roadhog's belly, his feet propped up on his discarded tank. His hair was drying, wild and salty on Roadhog's skin. His left hand was cast up and over Roadhog's side, trailing down the edge of his shark's tail. He patted the shark skin affectionately just where Roadhog's hip would have been. "Nice having you around looking after me."

Roadhog took a long, slow breath, and didn't know how to answer that. Didn't know how to tell Junkrat he hadn't been alone. Didn't know how to tell Junkrat that that hadn't mattered in the end, Junkrat still lost his arm over it. Didn't have the least idea how to tell Junkrat how carefully he wanted to keep him now. His exhalation hummed through his chest, because Junkrat seemed to be sensitive to the noises Roadhog made, even those that would be inaudible.

Junkrat apparently didn't need an answer, or maybe never expected one, or the low humm Roadhog made was enough, because he stayed just as he was draped over Roadhog. He kept his head turned slightly so that they both looked out and down the aft deck of the boat together. The heat pressed in and the sun shone down and the wind flicked up the diver-down flag on the _Hylinea's_ transom, and Junkrat sighed as he settled against Roadhog and smiled without Roadhog needing to say anything.

"You guys want to head back down soon?" Lucio asked sleepily from the cabin top above them.

"In a minute," Junkrat replied, sounding just as sleepy, if not more than Lucio, "if that much gold's been down there over two hundred years another few minutes won't kill it."

They sat another few minutes in peaceful quiet, while the tiny wireless speaker lashed to the roof of the cabin top beat out it's music, and the waves washed up under them and away.

"Less you're getting bored Hoggy," Junkrat added quietly.

"I'm in no rush," Roadhog, before he realized what he was doing, before he could stop himself, lifted one hand and set it over Junkrat's head, scuffing his hand over the wild, salty yellow hair.

Junkrat tensed in surprise and Roadhog went to pull his hand away, almost flinching back but Junkrat turned his head and caught Roadhog's hand in both of his.

"Good," Junkrat tugged at Roadhog's wrist and tipped his head against Roadhog's palm. "Alright then."

Roadhog kept very still, but gradually managed to relax, letting his hand rest against Junkrat's forehead, push his fingers over the salty half-dry hair. His hand felt huge on Junkrat, too big to be allowed. Eventually, Junkrat eased his grip, and Roadhog rubbed his thumb gently down over Junkrat's cheek before pulling away.

"What you said about magic," Junkrat said softly, "that true?"

"Yeah," Roadhog answered. He thought, again, of the mako skin he'd kept and carried through this year.

"Cool," Junkrat murmured. "Can you do it to me sometime?"

"Sure," Roadhog grunted. "Sometime."

They sat quietly for another few minutes, until Junkrat huffed out a sigh and seemed to start out of his doze. He crawled back up to his feet and stretched, looked over the side into the water through _Hylinea's_ shadow and paused, almost freezing. "Roadhog."

"Yeah?"

"There's a... lot of activity down there." Junkrat said. He sounded calm, which probably meant he wasn't.

This suspicion was confirmed by Lucio rocketing to full alert and jumping from the cabin top to the deck. He looked over the side next to Junkrat and swore roundly.

"Stay onboard till I come for you," Roadhog growled.

Roadhog hefted himself up, pulled himself over the rail and fell into the the water with a crash, sank halfway down to the shoal and looked around in mild astonishment. Activity was putting it mildly. There were a lot of white tip sharks. There were apparently every single white tip shark that could have heard the explosions. All of them in the particular mad head-space of terrified, curious and utterly enraged carnivores. There were also seven mercretures of assorted sizes, all of whom had recognized the sound of the explosions and apparently booked it over to look for the trespasser who'd come back after so long. The usually quiet, sandy shoal was awash with colour and movement and half furious, half angry expressions and gestures and heartbeats.

Roadhog sank into that whirl, looking around with a reassuring sense of his place in the world.

The merfolk recognized him instantly, and three didn't even bother looking perplexed, just turned abruptly and left. One darted directly into the blasted cavity of Junkrat's wreck and began raking through the busted timbers, sand and rocks. The remaining three tensed into fighting form, turned on Roadhog and lunged. The sharks knew a feeding opportunity when they felt this degree of rage and energy, and perked up optimistically.

Roadhog hefted his anchor, looked around and thought of how this was only the first of many, many wrecks Junkrat and he could profit from together. The three mer-creatures charging him didn't have any idea what could possibly be motivating Roadhog. Even if they did, they probably wouldn't have expected a wiry diver with a penchant for trouble and a lot of explosives to move Roadhog to the level of violence he lashed out to each of them.

Before he'd even finished with the first opponent, the one raking through the wreck for gold had looked up, make a decision that showed solid, life-giving judgement, and darted away. The next two were a little more troublesome.

In the end, they swam off in different directions pursued by a school of interested, hungry and optimistic carnivores, and Roadhog looked around the empty shoal. There was blood in the water and the whirling sand but most of it wasn’t his. The the wreck in the crater below him was looking more disrupted than a simple explosion could do, but it was enough, and Roadhog swam up to _Hylinea_ , broke the surface and pushed his mask up.

Two faces were looking down at the water with identical expressions of mingled fear and relief.

"You gave them hell," Junkrat said happily.

A the exact same time, Lucio piped up, slightly alarmed with, "Let’s get you patched up.”

Roadhog shook his head. "I'm fine, water's clear though 'Rat."

Junkrat beamed, and vanished from sight, leaving Lucio looking down at him with a little smile.

"Guess I didn't need to worry about you," Lucio said quietly, "You really don't mind him getting all up over you?"

Roadhog just grunted avoiding the question altogether in favor of scowling dourly up at the kind, smiling face of Lucio above him.

Lucio had his arms crossed on the rail of his little green boat, and was hunkered over, leaning over the water to talk to Roadhog. "I was gonna ask you to let him down gently if he came after you, but I guess that's not going to be a problem huh?"

Roadhog's mouth opened, he realized that he had absolutely nothing to say, and shut his mouth was a snap. He backed water slightly and glared up at Lucio, who looked supremely unrepentant, and was grinning down at Roadhog.

"You wrecked everything in the water. Anything that could hurt him. We could see, a little. Don't try and tell me the beatings you handed out were for the money because I know better, you took hits you didn't have to just to keep the last one around till you could give him his turn."

Junkrat stepped up to the rail then, turned, sat and leaned back in one smooth movement. He crashed over the side into the water next to Roadhog. This time when he sank into the water, his heart rate stayed the same, easy rate.

Roadhog cast one more glare up at Lucio, "You're misreading this." He growled, because there was no way that what Lucio was suggesting was real. Roadhog wasn't even human anymore. He could keep Junkrat safe, keep him diving and hunting up treasure. Anything else was stupid, wishful; hope so thin it could only be hurtful.

Lucio huffed out an incredulous little laugh. "Roadhog, I'm not." He grinned with perfect immunity straight into Roadhogs glare.

Before he could come up with more of an argument, he felt a tug on his dorsal fin and sank a little more into the water. Junkrat was swimming wide, lazy circles around him, keeping him in a constant spiraling column of bubbles. Choosing to simply ignore the last few seconds of his life, Roadhog shot one more glare up at Lucio, pulled his mask back down and dove.

Junkrat arched back and down to join him on his trajectory, utterly unperturbed by the creature twice his length swimming over him, and together, they spiralled gently around each other down into the wreck. The water was empty and quiet around them, the sun was high overhead and light was dancing in ribbons over the sand and rocks and shattered timbers of the old cargo carrier.

The gold had fused, from time and salt water and it's own weight into an almost solid chunk inside it's coffers. Roadhog had to pull the loot out while Junkrat kept watch, and held the basket down for him. The basket went up full four times with gold, and the fifth time it came down, Junkrat went exploring. Roadhog watched, too big to fit into the tiny spaces Junkrat was cramming himself into and for a while, totally lost sight of him. He'd found a gap in the planking, casually clicked on a flashlight, and dove into total and, for Roadhog, inaccessible darkness.

Roadhog swam anxious switchbacks over the hatch Junkrat had vanished down into.

Junkrat emerged supremely unruffled a few minutes later, held a hand out for the basket and took it down with him when he dove back down. When the basket came up for the fifth time, it was stuffed with pieces of things, the remains of sailor's valentines and fused shut boxes made of bronze or brass, oddments and bottles in their tatty old macrame cases. Things that might only be of value to the people who'd owned them decades ago. And to Junkrat apparently.

Junkrat tugged three times on the basket, and this time when it went up, it didn't come back down. The water was still blissfully empty around them, the sand settling and the sun still high up above them. it was bright and cool and quiet, and Junkrat was safe beside him, holding onto his arm and letting Roadhog tow him gently upwards. Roadhog swam in a slow, wide spiral up, with _Hylinea_ above them, their ultimate destination, and Junkrat gliding easily through the water along Roadhog's underside, both his hands, metal and flesh, clinging to Roadhog's arms.

They were halfway up through the water when Junkrat tugged at Roadhog's arms, and as Roadhog paused, checked his momentum and turned his ascent into a slow, careful glide around Junkrat, Junkrat reached out, and gently pulled the Mako skin from Roadhog's head and let it fall.

Roadhog started back slightly. His hair abruptly fanned out in the water around him, thick and white and badly needing to be tied back. He froze, floating stunned and suddenly seeing so much more; he'd been used to seeing the ocean through the sharks open teeth, used to hiding inside that mask and skin like a shroud.

Junkrat's fingers stroked up his cheek, warm and unexpected, and before Roadhog could stop himself, he'd caught Junkrat's left hand in his and held it. He looked at Junkrat, eyes wide in the shallow water, and Junkrat went perfectly still and his heart skipped a beat.

Lucio, Roadhog thought suddenly in the confused and half panicked silence of his brain, was a lot more observant than Roadhog had credited him as being. He cradled Junkrat's hand against his cheek, and reached out still holding his anchor, hooking it gently around Junkrat's side. They spiraled slowly around each other like that, aimless and easy.

Roadhog hoped, with the bleak intensity helplessness, that whatever this ache in his chest was, it wasn't foolish of him. It was years old and a year too late and it was centered on a diver who could blast the ocean floor apart for gold, then went back in for the valentines and old brass. For someone he thought had died because Roadhog hadn't protected him. For someone who was letting Roadhog spiral around them as they swam aimlessly over the empty shoal.

Then Junkrat moved, his free hand darting up to his face and he yanked his mask and regulator off in one impatient gesture and cloud of bubbles. Roadhog tensed, suddenly terrified, already gathering himself to hang onto Junkrat, shoot up to the surface and get him back up into the sunshine and fresh air _right now_ and he wasn't dying in Roadhogs arms.

Before the moved anywhere, Junkrat pushed himself up, slipped his free hand behind Roadhog's neck, and kissed him before Roadhog could react.

He moved fast, then stayed still, right hand too tight at the back of roadhog's neck, left hand trembling against his cheek. Junkrat’s mouth was warm and his heart was hammering and Roadhog did not have the strength to break that kiss regardless of how much he might need to.

Finally, Junkrat pulled away, and Roadhog flicked his tail, mindlessly chasing another kiss and this time bearing Junkrat up with it, letting one hand stroke, blunt and clumsy and careful over Junkrat's hair and settle on the back of his head. Warm in the water, and Junkrat kissed down hard into him, hungry and fast and seemingly unable to stop himself.

He pulled back, and kept Junkrat at bay with the hand in his hair, as they rose, Roadhog's tail moving slow and easy through the water, and they came up together out of the water.

Junkrat blinked, startled and spluttering as Roadhog kept him carefully afloat.

"What'd I say about trouble?" Roadhog growled softly.

Junkrat's hand went flat to Roadhog's chest and he smiled in the same happy, dozy way Roadhog had seen yesterday in the tidepool. They were pressed together, skin on skin, chest to belly, and Junkrat was arching into him, like he was hungry for more contact.

"Hey," Roadhog grunted, and tapped the edge of one knuckle gently against Junkrat's cheek. His other hand, still holding his anchor, fell naturally into the curve of Junkrat's back.

"You're with me. It's not trouble if you're here," Junkrat replied with perfect confidence.

Roadhog huffed at Junkrat, who just grinned straight back at him. Then something like anxiety flashed over his grin.

"Unless I'm bothering you and you're just letting me get away with this because you're letting me get away with everything so far and..." He said, all in one breath, and all while gently rubbing his thumb back and forth over Roadhog's chest.

"Shut up," Roadhog grunted, and pulled Junkrat back in and up for another kiss.

Watched him dive all this time. Thought he was dead for a year. Now he was here and real and alive and arching up into the kiss with salt on his lips and his fingers pressing into Roadhog's skin.

"Nice," Junkrat murmured. He had his eyes closed and his lashes were matted with sea water. "Alright then."

"In your own time."

Roadhog started, but he'd completely forgotten Lucio waiting for them on _Hylinea_ above them. The boy was grinning down at them with the insuppressible happiness that came straight from the heart.

"But tide is getting on."

"Right, yeah," Junkrat made two attempts before he manage to tear his gaze off Roadhog and up at Lucio. "Got everything?"

"Hell of a haul," Lucio beamed down at them, "You two are a great team."

Roadhog was still watching Junkrat, still had one hand on Junkrat's back and the other cradling the back of his head. Still watching the wild, sharp edged joy that he radiated. He burned hot against Roadhog, who'd forgotten how powerful feelings could be when you wanted them.

He helped Junkrat climb up into _Hylinea_ and passed his discarded mask up after him. Lucio promised to follow him just as they had come in, and looking delighted and somewhat relieved into Roadhog's eyes as they talked.

Roadhog dove down as Lucio and Junkrat started getting their two anchors up. The mako skin Junkrat had pulled off him didn't mean nearly as much as it had now that he knew his diver was alive, that Junkrat wasn't lost. He didn't need it anymore.

But mer-creatures weren't born they were made.

Roadhog pulled the mask and skin back into place, and safely led _Hylinea_ back to shore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, happy Secret Santa to Alec! I hope you enjoyed a lot of fic and some fluff with mermaids in.  
> I got really wrapped up in writing this, and planning it and mapping the area and so on, since it's very close to home with the unfortunate distinction that my home is a little colder and so far I haven't seen a single mermaid. I have more of this planned out, so if you enjoyed, you may find more coming your way!  
> Thank you again to Daishar and Windlion who were absolute dolls.  
> This chapter is unbeta'd so all the horribly embarrassing grammar and spelling mistakes are mine, and I apologize.  
> Merry Christmas <3


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